… but Venice is canals. Sometimes people say Birmingham/Bruges/Amsterdam is the Venice of Britain/Belgium/Holland. They aren’t. They are places with some canals. There is only one place that is the Venice of anywhere. Venice. It is in a league of its own.

Nor, sadly, does it have the body of one of the four evangelists (brazenly stolen from Alexandria) or the four horses of classical antiquity (brazenly looted from Constantinople) nor is it the home of Marco Polo or Claudio Monteverdi. Nor does it have the Doge’s Palace or the Rialto Bridge or the Murano glassworks. Nor has its descent into the sea been halted only to find that global warming is now causing the sea itself to rise. 'Part from that they’re much the same.